Friday, December 06, 2019

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 6 December 2019 - 12 December 2019

Weekend after Thanksgiving, so there's not much coming out, so let's catch up and find something unusual.

The biggest new release is Playmobil: The Movie, which sounds like a lame knockoff of The Lego Movie, but my nieces love those toys, so who knows. It's got Anya Taylor-Joy (making some interesting detours outside of horror these days) following her little brother into the world of Playmobil. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere.

Dark Waters expands to West Newton, Fenway, the Seaport, Assembly Row, and Revere after opening at Kendall Square, Boston Common, and Causeway Street last week, while Waves adds South Bay, the Embassy and Revere to the Coolidge, Kendall Square, Boston Common, and Causeway Street. Boston Common also picks up No Safe Spaces, a documentary by and for people who confuse the First Amendment with being able to say whatever you want without consequence.

A few recent favorites are coming back this weekend, too: They Shall Not Grow Old comes back to Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, and Assembly Row for 3D shows on Saturday (with more next week). Sneaky, seeing as Warner hasn't released a 3D Blu-ray anywhere. Meanwhile, Apollo 11 has a couple shows a day on Assembly Row's Imax screen. GKids brings back Promare for "redux" shows at Boston Common, Fenway, and South Bay on Sunday (subtitled) and Tuesday (subbed, at least at Fenway).

Fenway also continues their weekend holiday matinees on Saturday, with Gremlins, while Assembly Row andRevere haVe animated first-Christmas story The Star on Saturday and Sunday. There are also 75th Anniversary shows of Meet Me in St. Louis at Fenway and Assembly Row on Sunday and Wednesday. INXS: Live Baby Live plays Fenway and Revere on Monday. There is one last screening of Faustina: Love and Mercy at Fenway and South Bay on Tuesday. Revere also has GoodFellas on Thursday. There are special preview shows of Uncut Gems at Causeway Street on Sunday (although they look to be sold out), and their "ArcLight Presents" show on Monday is Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

The Aeronauts, starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones as pioneering baloonists doing revolutionary 19th-Century weather research, will be on Amazon Prime in a couple of weeks, but its limited theatrical run will be big, with most of the showtimes at The Coolidge Corner Theatre playing in 70mm, with a few on DCP (as well as all the shows at Kendall Square).

After midnight, the Coolidge also starts a month full of (mostly) holiday genre movies, with a 35mm print of Silent Night, Deadly Night on Friday and the original Suspiria with a Haus of Oni drag preshow on Saturday. Their are special presentation throughout the week as well: Sunday's Goethe-Institut show is The Most Beautiful Couple, Jeff Rapsis will be in town to accompany a Buster Keaton double feature of The Cameraman & Sherlock Jr. for "Sound of Silents", there's Open Screen on Tuesday, a Panomara show of documentary Parkland Rising with director Cheryl Horner McDonough and several of the subjects in person on Wednesday, and another documentary screening on Thursday, with the world premiere of Women of Earth in partnership with Rise Up & Care.

Kendall Square also picks up Little Joe, which features Emily Beecham as a plant breeder whose new creation is a perfect flower - beautiful, sweet-smelling, and able to actually make people happy - obviously, it is sinister. And with the Amazon movie on one screen, they have Netflix's The Two Popes on another, with Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce as Popes Benedict and Francis in a dramatization of the day when they passed the torch, something usually only done upon death.

The Brattle Theatre opens the final film from Agnès Varda, the self-examining Varda by Agnès, which runs through Thursday and plays as a double feature with Varda's One Sings, the Other Doesn't on Saturday & Sunday afternoon. The late show from Friday to Wednesday is Knives and Skin, a nifty, surreal small-town murder story that I really liked at Fantasia.

The weekend's new Chinese movie is The Whistleblower, with Tang Wei investigating a new and apparently dangerous piece of mining technology in this Australian co-production. Two Tigers is also sticking around.

The new Bollywood epic at Apple Fresh Pond is Panipat, based upon the 1761 battle of the same name. There are also scattered shows of other Indian movies: The Kannada-language Babru is a thriller about a road trip across the United States plays Friday and Saturday, a special digitally remastered show of Bashaa with Superstar Rajinikanth on Saturday, and something called "Mismatch" on Sunday, with Bala still going.

They also pick up a couple American indies: A Million Little Pieces stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson (whose wife Sam directs) as an aspiring writer with addiction issues, with Billy Bob Thornton, Juliette Lewis, Odessa Young, and Giovanni Ribisi co-starring; while A New Christmas stars Pranshantt Guptha and Grace Wacuka as two strangers in New York who meet during the holiday season.

The West Newton Cinema has one late-afternoon show of day of Skin, which is by the people who made the inexplicably-Oscar-winning short of the same name and attacks similar themes but is a different story entirely

The Harvard Film Archive starts a short run of Susan Sontag's recently restored (for its 50th anniversary) Duet for Cannibals, with two shows Friday night and one on Monday. On Sunday, they pay tribute to their longtime projectionist Steve Livernash, with a reception in the afternoon and a free 35mm of his favorite film, The Rules of the Game, at 7pm.

It's not quite All Coen Brothers All The Time at The Museum of Fine Arts, but they continue their retrospective with Miller's Crossing (Friday/Sunday), Raising Arizona (Friday/Saturday), Blood Simple (Saturday), Barton Fink (Sunday/Wednesday), and Fargo (Thursday). They also start a run of George T. Nierenberg's 1983 documentary on gospel music, Say Amen, Somebody, with shows on Wednesday and Thursday.

The ICA screens Kusama: Infinity on Saturday afternoon, free with museum admission (tickets can be reserved ahead of time); note that it is separate from their Yayoi Kusama exhibition.

The Boston Underground Film Festival has their monthly Dispatches from the Underground at The Somerville Theatre on Wednesday with "A Very Duke Mitchell XMas", a collection of trailers, found footage, ads, and other oddities from London's Duke Mitchell Film Club. Note that the Somerville is going to be down a screen for much of December, with "The Slutcracker" taking up residence in the big room for shows on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Thursday.

The Luna Theater has The Lighthouse on Friday and Saturday evening, Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace on Saturday afternoon, WBCN and the American Revolution at twilight on Saturday and Tuesday evening, and a full day of Gremlins on Sunday, as well as the usual free surprise packages of Saturday Morning Cartoons, Sunday "Magic Mystery Movie Club", and Weirdo Wednesday

I'm seeing The Aeronauts on the big film, Little Joe, and The Whistleblower, and probably (finally) catching up on A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Queen and Slim, and Jojo Rabbit. Very tempted by Apollo 11 and They Shall Not Grow Old, because those are just different on the big screen.